Are The 2022 Quarters Lighter Than Usual?

I think I read the story in Coin World or Numismatic News back in 1999. I never actually checked the weight to confirm it but at that time there was a large discrepancy between the weight of 1965 and 1998 quarters. I believe it exceeded 1.5% but never checked this either.

I did assemble a few rolls of heavily worn quarters and noted the complete rolls "appeared" to be six or seven coins short because they were so much thinner.

Thin quarters just aren't seen much any longer. I believe they were sorted out in '08. The coins don't really wear much any longer as they are eroded away by collisions with machines. They are scratched more than worn away by rubbing.

I used to add coins to my most heavily worn set of clad quarters very frequently but it's been many years since a single coin has been added. Once in a while I see one that's very worn and not too banged up but when I compare it to the one in the set it is much less worn and far more banged up.

The mint does a fairly good job of making new coin the same thickness but some BU rolls like the '74 easily fit in the plastic tubes and other dates like the '88-D (IMS) won't even hold "38" coins. Some years are thicker and some years they have trouble with what they call "finning" where the rims squeeze between the collar and die creating a very thick coin. Some dates like the '84-P have very shallow rims and never fin but then the coins quickly acquire marking because the rim is too low to protect it. I haven't seen a nice '84-P in circulation since the mid-'90's; they're usually a mess even before they get to AU-/XF+.

The article did not speculate on why they reduced the thickness of the substrate, merely that they did. I believe it was to reduce the range of weight of circulating quarters by 1% once the '88 to '98 quarters were worn down a little. Instead of a 2.5% range it was reduced to a 1.5% range. Removing the worn coins merely affected the average rather than the range.

Data is hard to come by so much of it is deduction. I've talked to the FED but never seem to remember to ask all the important questions. Of course some of the people at the FED have narrow expertise so can't answer every question anyway. They are much more forthcoming than commercial interests who treat you like you're trying to case the joint.

This all occurred back during a period that the mint was finally informing the hobby about what they had been doing during all those years that nobody cared what they were doing. No one collected coins or cared about their quality or distribution from '65 top '98 so the mint wasn't talking. They had only recently admitted that mint set coins were different than the circulating coins because they were better made with new dies. It was also the year they discontinued the souvenir mint set program without ever telling anyone mintages had crashed to almost nothing at all.

I expected all these revelations to spark modern coin collecting but instead it propelled the states quarters through the roof. They were so popular mintages became astronomical!!! But nobody noticed there weren't many nice looking '84-P quarters in any grade.